Guys i am confused .
Disc spec is not healing done but preventing the damage + heal through it .
With all the nerfs that blizzard done (PW:S) is like they tell us that we are not damage reduction/prevention healers.
So it is better to all go holy i think.

Guys i am confused .
Disc spec is not healing done but preventing the damage + heal through it .
With all the nerfs that blizzard done (PW:S) is like they tell us that we are not damage reduction/prevention healers.
So it is better to all go holy i think.

Personally I find Disc to be a lot more fun than holy, and therefore unless disc becomes totally worthless I'll always find a way to keep playing it somehow.
And yes, until now disc healing has been about mitigating damage as primary role; I believe blizzard is trying to change that and force us to go to a more active health-bar management. I mean they've tried everything to stop bubble botters so far, and it's not over yet.

Personally I find Disc to be a lot more fun than holy, and therefore unless disc becomes totally worthless I'll always find a way to keep playing it somehow.
And yes, until now disc healing has been about mitigating damage as primary role; I believe blizzard is trying to change that and force us to go to a more active health-bar management. I mean they've tried everything to stop bubble botters so far, and it's not over yet.

In other related news, the state of Disc in 4.2 is really shaping up to be something like this:

"So what about Disc?""Well, its competing well statistically with other healers in both tank and raid healing roles."
"Right, but, I mean, its MST is only valid and really good for one spell and lackluster for a talented ability on crit [auto on PoH].""Well, sure, but those two things are good and powerful."
"Doesn't that pretty much make Disc revolve around these two things?""Huh... guess so. But that isn't bad because absorption is its kick, like druids and HoTs."
"Druids have more than one directly castable HoT though... and don't Paladins have a pretty KA absorb in 4.2 via MST now?""Yeah, but their MST sucked so we had to do something."
"Wasn't there talk of a second cast-able absorb that was to be "the tank shield" in pre-alpha Cata development? Wasn't PW:S suppose to be the low HPS, high HPM shield while a second shield would be high HPS, low/moderate HPM?""Yup."
"Care to elaborate on why it never made it to Alpha?""Nope."
"Wait, wasn't Disc also suppose to explore DMG to Healing via AA/Aton? That has absolutely nothing to do with absorbs!""Oh yeah... well we beefed that up in 4.1."
"...but it still is only used mostly to build AA in a raiding environment.""Look, RIFT had its big deal with DPS->Heals and we HAD to test it out somewhere to see how it would work in our system."
"Any conclusions?""We aren't willing to present the results of our internal analysis and testing on this matter."
"You aren't doing anything with it are you?""Like I said..."
"...are you?""...no."

i fear that, if blizzard will do nothing about mana becoming less and less a problem, mastery and intellect scaling ad infinitum, and shield mana cost remaining the same, we'll be soon a shield bot again..awesome! >.>

PWS cant crit so the 200% crit buff is actually a disc priest nerf compared to other healers who can crit with all their spells. If a dpriest and a pally had same healing throughput on a tank before this change, the pally now is going to have slightly higher HPS. If anything this is a nerf to tank healing in the sense that you got buffed less than other healers.

i fear that, if blizzard will do nothing about mana becoming less and less a problem, mastery and intellect scaling ad infinitum, and shield mana cost remaining the same, we'll be soon a shield bot again..awesome! >.>

They are closely watching spirit on gear. You'll notice your spirit barely goes up with new gear. Still unless they give us close to no spirit/int at all I can see that being an issue in 4.3+ . Int is just as good as spirit and they have to put it on gear anyway. That is what you get when you implement a design without thinking few months ahead (I like this new design tho). TBH I can see them doing something as stupid as changing our expensive spells to be based on overall mana instead of base mana, to fix this issue.

Last edited by Deleo; 2011-06-27 at 06:58 AM.

I've walked the realms of the dead. I have seen the infinite dark. Nothing you say. Or do. Could possibly frighten me.

We are not monsters! We are not the mindless wretches of a ghoul army! NO! We are a force even more terrifying! We are the chill in a coward's spine! We are the instruments of an unyielding ire! WE ARE THE FORSAKEN!

Those who do not stand with the Forsaken stand against them. And those who stand against the Forsaken will not stand long.

Last I remember, DA scales nicely with 200% crits so the sky isn't falling down yet. Bigger health pools, bigger potential for DA absorb and bigger DA procs from each crit. I'm happy. Since Disc primarily tank heal, our throughput will increase although not as much as paladins, but keep us level. I'm not remotely concerned about falling behind paladins at this role.

I don't know about how you gear, but I gainspirit next patch from upgrading my HC gear to 378 normal gear. Granted I use 5x non-spirit pieces already and reforge out of spirit also, meaning that + the int from higher tier gear means regen is significantly improving. I won't be bubble botting, even if my mana can handle it. It's simply not needed but if people want to pad meters by absorbing damage another healer could heal up (eg Hpriest) in 1/2 casts, that's up to them. I'll work on keeping the tanks alive and shielding on people who don't have time to have a casted heal on them. I should note that I haven't played on the PTR, so I don't know the nature of the fights yet...

PWS cant crit so the 200% crit buff is actually a disc priest nerf compared to other healers who can crit with all their spells. If a dpriest and a pally had same healing throughput on a tank before this change, the pally now is going to have slightly higher HPS.

The difference you'll see in throughput is more about the percentage of heals that DO crit than those that CAN crit, and how those crits scale. For example, the Paladin I tank heal with in 25s runs about 20% crit raidbuffed, everything he casts scales from crit, and he will get 200% crits. I run 34% crit raidbuffed, 70% of what I cast can crit, and that stuff crits for around 280%. If our throughput was the same before, his will go up by around 20% * 100% * 100% = 20%, and mine by 34% * 70% * 180% = 43%.

I've been reading and thinking a lot about this incoming 200% critt buff, and I think we all can agree that it is a boost for all healers, no matter what. The amount of how much each class benefit from this buff is different, and I am also sure that we can all agree that discipline priests wont benefit as much as other classes or as our holy specc. The reason behind this is basically because (according to WoL and personal experience) PW:S is our top1 healing ability. you should use it atleast every 12th second for rapture, and most players use it a lot more than that. Why wouldn't we? It's instant and it's a great tool for preventing damage. But since it's not a direct healing, but absorbing ability we wont benefit from the 200% critt (except you would get increased healing from the PW:S glyph, yaaay xD). The top2 and 3 healing ability's is different from each encounter, and your healing role/assignment. GH, PH, FH (rarely) and DA is often the other top ability's we use, and we will notice an increase from these on the "meters".

But some say its a nerf, and I cant agree with that. In what universe is that a nerf, you will heal more with this buff, not a lot, but still more. I agree with the "smack in the ballz" not buffing or main ability, since all the other healers will, but it wont matter that much at all. Your resto druid will probably love some higher critt on their hots, but I think pally's actually just is going to get more "overhealing". I dont think peple actually is going to stack that much critt anyway overall. It's way to much rng.. "cmon, tank at 5% hp, if I just get critt now everything would be fine, come on, DAMMIT!!!:@". Healers cant build their healing around luck. Of course, sometimes we do have some luck and save the day with a huge critt heal, but how often can you say that?

I've been playing disc for quite a while now (2 years, sorry for not posting that much), and no offence, but I find holy boring compared with discipline. You have to take in mind that mastery is buffing us a lot. Each point of mastery increases our healing, or our shields with a fair amount. I am not sure about the other healers compared with us when it comes to mastery, but I am sure that discipline's mastery is exactly what disc is build around, shielding and preventing damage. So don't tell me blizzard want PW:S out of the game, or some kind of emergency heal. Back in the old days, or maybe not that old, PW:S was way to powerful, and our manapool made it possible to spam our shield button. (I think they figured my shield button was tired, ad wanted to give it a bit rest).

I got a hpally and a rdruid, sadly not a rshaman yet in 85. And I find my discipline the most balanced healing specc atm. I dont think we need nerfs or buffs in that matter, we need the other healers in our range. I cant say I've been playing PTR 4.2 that much, so I can't give my opinion about the current healing state for discipline compared with other healing classes/speccs. I am playing at EU, and ant wait for the release 29.06.

In the end of my post I just have to qq about 1 or 2 things atleast xD
*1.* I would really like a minor pw:s, and maybe boost the current pw:s. 1 raid shield that is fairly weak, but cheap, and 1 tank or emergency shield or our current shield. A shield that would let us play our bubbleshooting at some point, but still not be powerful enough alone at all. Kinda like when everything is slack for healers. You always get a window or two while playing an encounter, where you don't need to do much, just wait (only talking about some second's). Something like or heal ability, a cheap but not really that effective cast. It could provide the same debuff, so you would had to choose what shield that would be the smartest choice. Considering mana and how much the target need that shield.
*2.* While I was posting this thread I raged at my laptop twice. First it wanted to update itself without giving me any warning SHUTDOWN! Thank GOD for the recovery. Second, I went out of power, and again it didnt scream or warn me -.- My fault though, but it's always good to blame the computer -.-

If I did type something mistelling, please notify the other's, I am going away tommorow (yes I know, Firelands *SIGH*), so I cant edit it. However, feel free to discuss my point of view.

The difference you'll see in throughput is more about the percentage of heals that DO crit than those that CAN crit, and how those crits scale. For example, the Paladin I tank heal with in 25s runs about 20% crit raidbuffed, everything he casts scales from crit, and he will get 200% crits. I run 34% crit raidbuffed, 70% of what I cast can crit, and that stuff crits for around 280%. If our throughput was the same before, his will go up by around 20% * 100% * 100% = 20%, and mine by 34% * 70% * 180% = 43%.

That is also an issue I've mentioned in other posts. For this post I assumed all healers have the exact same crit chance. But with actual numbers I believe the healer with less crit chance is getting a nerf with this 200% healing crits buff.

Also some people. please keep in mind when we say buff and nerf in this thread we are talking about relative numbers not exact ones. 150 -> 200% crits is buff to every healer but some healers may get less buffed by this change compared to others which will make this a nerf.

Last edited by Deleo; 2011-06-29 at 05:32 AM.

I've walked the realms of the dead. I have seen the infinite dark. Nothing you say. Or do. Could possibly frighten me.

We are not monsters! We are not the mindless wretches of a ghoul army! NO! We are a force even more terrifying! We are the chill in a coward's spine! We are the instruments of an unyielding ire! WE ARE THE FORSAKEN!

Those who do not stand with the Forsaken stand against them. And those who stand against the Forsaken will not stand long.

Bubbles don't crit or benefit from the crit buff, no, but bubbles ALSO don't overheal.

Most critical heals end up as overheal anyway unless the tank is in severe trouble, and if they ARE in trouble you should be casting large, real heals on them which WILL benefit from the crit buff (assuming weakened soul is still up).

Bubbles don't crit or benefit from the crit buff, no, but bubbles ALSO don't overheal.

Most critical heals end up as overheal anyway unless the tank is in severe trouble, and if they ARE in trouble you should be casting large, real heals on them which WILL benefit from the crit buff (assuming weakened soul is still up).

I really do not see this as an issue against disc priests at all.

Divine Aegis is also immune to overheal... and you crit on them with Grace too. Why do people keep forgetting that?

I only mentioned weakened soul because if it WAS up, then your first choice would be to throw a shield out obviously. Not that you only use weakened soul for the crit buff from Renewed Hope. Of course grace also gives the bonus to crit. That wasn't my point.

Once you've shielded them you can't throw out another one so what do you turn to? Cast-able heals which fully benefit from the 200% crit heal buff.

I did some poking around in Firelands last night. Mostly tank-healing, with emergency triage thrown in and raid healing when I could afford to take my eyes off tanks (not often). 25-man. Remarkably, I found that my crits were almost 100% effective - my average crit heal was 1.92x as high as my average non-crit heal. In other words, my crits were barely overhealing more than my non-crits. Time will tell whether this was a fluke, but based on those logs I crunched some numbers and found that the best thing I could do for throughput was to have about 1.5x as much Crit Rating as Mastery. Getting away from that balance in either direction reduced throughput. Haste was comparable to Crit and Mastery, taking into account the fact that it also requires more Spirit to support it and doesn't help Penance at all (and PW:S only somewhat).

Given that all three interact multiplicatively to increase healing, I reckon the best thing to do is to try to get raid-buffed haste throughput improvements (taking Borrowed Time partially into account) and raid-buffed effective crit improvements to be similar. This leaves me with about 2300 Spirit, 1000 Haste, 1500 Crit, and 1000 Mastery. Of course, the nice thing about being close to the optimum (in the case of a broad plateau like this) is that you can wiggle a good bit in any direction and still be close to optimum.

They are closely watching spirit on gear. You'll notice your spirit barely goes up with new gear.

Problem is, that all the new items suitable for healers have spirit on them by definition. Everything else we could wear has hit rating instead. Combined with some other bonuses, you become more and more unlikely to go oom or to even drop below 20% of mana.

With the patch implemented, my healing throughput increased in 1/5 or almost 1/3 in some fights, while my mana regeneration / mana spent rate didn't change much or at all. (While, of course, crits have been buffed.)

These are actually 270% or more with DA. Even with my low mastery they are 270+ unless I suck at basic math
Yeah these crits are insane.

At 14 Mastery Skill, unless I also suck with math, it comes out to a 40.5% Divine Aegis. 240% crit, unless you're running the spirit/crit meta (why?)

You multiplied Divine Aegis as 1.3, but the "1" of that value is a non-factor, because that's the heal and isn't itself increased. Mastery doesn't scale that well with Divine Aegis, it's really Shield that devours that stat whole.

200% healing crit, plus 40.5% Aegis value ontop of that, that really is a sexy sexy value when it comes to tank healing, and is a huge buff.

"Discipline is nerfed compared to other specs" that keeps popping up in this thread? Hardly. No other spec wants crit, they take it as a bonus when it happens but isn't reliable output. Discipline, on the other hand, uses, abuses, and loves every second of Divine Aegis (when tank healing), and this only further cements the fact that Discipline on Single Target outperforms Holy Paladins*.

*Disclaimer: Holy Paladins can't raid heal, and the second you bring a second tank into the fight, BeaconCleave tends to win out over anything else.